perch

Every day, their hearts beat. Every day, their lungs work and my world continues spinning. Justin was asleep in bed at 5am and every morning in the pre-dawn dense warm darkness of baby noises, I check for him to be sure he made it home safe, back to our nest of tangled arms and legs and the six lungs breathing in and out and the three beating hearts we made, beating still.

My world rests precariously on six small lungs inflating and expanding. I never knew how precarious my perch was until I saw Teddy's chest rising and falling in perfect rhythm to the machine that was breathing for him. Two days old, and I thought for a moment that he was breathing on his own. "Oh no, that's the ventilator." His chest reminded me of a balloon rhythmically inflating and deflating. There was a mechanical precision to his breathing. It was unlike the noisy gasping, the irregular snuffles and sniffs and long exhales and quick short inhales of a newborn breathing. And of course there was no noise. No whimpers. No newborn squeaks. He was intubated. With mechanical precision, his chest rose and fell in perfect, unnatural silence, like something pretending to be a baby, like a "Baby Alive!" doll. The most chilling words my husband ever spoke were, "Why is he desatting on the ventilator?"

What a precarious perch our happiness is. All of us dependent on these collections of tiny machines that could break down at any moment. Our bed, with the three of them and my husband at 5am feels safe and I don't ever want them to leave this space, don't want them to wake up and step outside to have their precious, precarious bodies assaulted by the world outside our frosted windows.

Yet they wake, and there is noise and movement and sunlight, heavy white clouds and school. And Sheamus wants me to walk him into kindergarten and group hug at the bottom of the stairs. Nat carries a stuffed animal into preschool for pajama day as I think of the thousand dangers we send them out to face with blind faith that their bodies will keep working. We trust that tomorrow, we will again awake to their six lungs inflating and deflating, on their own, in our bed.